Landlord ordered to pay former tenant nearly $13,000 in damages

"It's inconceivable that a landlord constantly leaves the life and health of his tenants in danger by voluntarily neglecting the maintenance of his buildings," Judge Marc Lavigne writes in the brief judgment.

Peeling paint and plaster in the vestibule of an apartment building at 8151 Stuart Ave. in Montreal Friday Feb. 5, 2016. Owner Claudio Di Giambattista, who passed away in December, was ordered to pay a former tenant nearly $13,000 in damages in a December judgment by the Régie du Logement,John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette

A notorious Montreal landlord will have to pay a former tenant close to $13,000 in damages after his building was deemed a danger to the health and well-being of its residents, the Régie du logement ruled in December.

Salmah Idar was desperately looking for an apartment in the summer of 2011 when she found a landlord willing to let her and her six young children move into a 5 1/2 apartment in Park Extension.

It was in pretty rough condition, the 43-year-old said on Friday, but she “couldn’t find anywhere else that would allow the seven of us to live in one apartment.”

She signed a lease for $700 a month and moved in that July. Despite her best efforts to make it livable for her children, she was well aware that the conditions were subpar — there was visible mould, “lots and lots” of cockroaches and mice, and holes in the walls, she says. The water would turn on and off. The faucets always leaked, and the glass back door had been smashed in.

On the morning of Nov. 10, 2011, she received a notice from the city of Montreal: city inspectors and the public health department had declared the six-apartment building unlivable.

The notice said she would have to leave because the apartment not only puther health at risk, “but also the security and well-being of both the residents and the public.”

She and her children were forced to leave the same day, and told she couldn’t take anything because it was contaminated — from her furniture to clothes and family photo albums. The children weren’t even allowed to take their stamp and sticker collections, she said.

“We had to leave everything behind.”

In December, the Régie du logement finally ordered the landlord and owner of the Stuart Ave. building, Claudio Di Giambattista, to pay Idar $12,743. She was granted $3,743 in material damages, and $4,000 in moral damages.

Di Giambattista was also ordered to pay her $5,000 in punitive damages.

“It’s inconceivable that a landlord constantly leaves the life and health of his tenants in danger by voluntarily neglecting the maintenance of his buildings,” Judge Marc Lavigne wrote in the brief judgment. “The only factor that matters to him is collecting rent.”

In October 2014, a separate judge had ordered Di Giambattista to pay Idar’s neighbour in the building more than $4,000 for many of the same reasons.

“The evidence shows that the building required many urgent repairs, which the owner and landlord neglected and/or refused to do,” that judgment reads.

Di Giambattista has a history of having his buildings either evacuated or condemned by the city of Montreal, and has sued the city numerous times to have the condemnations lifted. In 2002, the Superior Court of Québec declared him a vexatious litigator, a rare designation handed down to people who use the court system to an annoying extent.

According to Régie du logement spokesperson Denis Miron, Di Giambattista has been involved in 185 cases with the rental board since 1999, either as a plaintiff or defendant. Mironcould not say how many of those were complaints against Di Giambattista.

“The majority of the cases against him have to do with the state of the apartments,” Miron said.

In 2012, Di Giambattista was forced to pay a total of about $34,000 to six tenants who lived in a different, 15-unit building he owned in Park Extension. During the rental board hearings, he was thrown out for inappropriate behaviour and “shouting at everyone abusively,” the judge in that case wrote in the decision. Di Giambattista challenged the decision but lost.

Di Giambattista could not be reached for comment on Friday.

Following the evacuation in 2011, Idar and her children moved into a room at a YMCA for two weeks while a non-profit organization helped them find another place to live.

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